Ginsberg's Dissent

The 8 Best Lines From Ginsburg's Dissent on the Hobby Lobby Contraception Decision | Mother Jones:

On Monday, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg penned a blistering dissent to the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling that the government can't require certain employers to provide insurance coverage for methods of birth control and emergency contraception that conflict with their religious beliefs. Ginsburg wrote that her five male colleagues, "in a decision of startling breadth," would allow corporations to opt out of almost any law that they find "incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs."

Here are seven more key quotes from Ginsburg's dissent in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby:

Wounded At Gun Show

Oops: Gun dealer shoots woman at gun show - The Washington Post:

Shooting a customer rarely results in a sale.

Yet, at a gun show in Bloomsburg, Pa., on Saturday, a gun dealer may have done just that...

Blackwater Blackmail

Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater - NYTimes.com:

Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports...

If The Shoe Fits...

Real Time Guest Brooks Compares 'Right Wing Reactionary' 'Tea Party' To Nazis | Crooks and Liars:

It seems the right is none too happy with one of Bill Maher's guests, Max
Brooks, author and son of filmmaker Mel Brooks, for his comments on this Friday's Real Time. Brooks compared the extremists in the Republican party who have decided to brand themselves as the so-called "tea party" to the rise of the Nazis in post-WWI Germany...

Pain And The DEA

Cannonfire-- "Drugs, pain and the whole damned thing"
:

...It’s not just a war on black-market, “street” drugs, it’s a four decades-long societal blitzkrieg to control and micromanage every kind of illegal and legitimate psychopharmacological agent that has any conceivable anesthetic, euphoric or dissociative mind-altering properties. Many hundreds of thousands of arrests, prosecutions, convictions and imprisonments later, along with god knows how many wasted hundreds of billions and illegal drug activity in the USA is so demonstrably worse than it ever was when war was first declared back in 1970, that nobody knows whether to laugh or cry. Except, that is, the movers and shakers of the criminal underworld who of course are absolutely thrilled, along with the many legitimate businesses that prosper handsomely from this immensely self-destructive national crusade. Their greatest fear is that America might have an attack of common-sense and repeal drug prohibition...

Screech Harpy Hates Soccer

Ann Coulter: “No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer” - Salon.com:

...“If more ‘Americans’ are watching soccer today, it’s only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy’s 1965 immigration law,” Coulter writes. “I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer,” she continues. “One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time.”

SOS Clinton As Scapegoat

Narcissists, scapegoats and the golden child | The Confluence:

...Their most significant triumph to date has been to get their golden child elected. The scapegoat is Hillary Clinton. Look at any comment section of a left leaning blog and you will find this is true. Obama inherited the financial crisis. That’s why the economy sucks. The Republicans hate Obama. That’s why the ACA is FUBAR. Obama didn’t start the war in Iraq. So, it’s not his fault if the void we left when we pulled out of Iraq has destabilized the country...

Hillary can do nothing right. Everything she says is scrutinized in order to put the worst possible spin on it. She’s not perfect, that’s for sure, and right now, unless I see her move to the left boldly, I’m not voting for her. But, golly gee, nobody is as bad as the left seems to think she is. According to the left, she and her husband single handedly wrecked welfare and imposed an unconstitutional piece of legislation on gay people. Then they wickedly danced around the fire while chanting incantations and laughing evilly at the suffering of others. It’s an image of the Clintons that completely cuts out the crazy Whitewater scandal, the crazy Monica scandal, the hours of congressional hearings and special prosecutions and the millions of dollars that they and their friends and everyone who ever worked for them were forced to spend on what turned out to be harassment suits. This during the Newt Gingrich years. Remember Newt??...

Consumers Lose One

Broadcasters cheer as Aereo loses Supreme Court fight�-�Los Angeles Times:

In a major victory for the broadcast television industry, the Supreme Court ruled that Aereo — the start-up tech firm that distributes local television signals over the Internet — is illegal.

The 6-3 decision in the case of ABC vs. Aereo is likely to sound a death knell for the tiny company that launched in 2012 as a low-cost alternative to high-priced cable and satellite television. It promised to change the way that people watched TV...

Cruelty In America

The United States Of Cruelty - Esquire:

...We cheer for cruelty and say that we are asking for personal responsibility among those people who are not us, because the people who are not us do not deserve the same benefits of the political commonwealth that we have. In our politics, we have become masters of camouflage. We practice fiscal cruelty and call it an economy. We practice legal cruelty and call it justice. We practice environmental cruelty and call it opportunity. We practice vicarious cruelty and call it entertainment. We practice rhetorical cruelty and call it debate. We set the best instincts of ourselves in conflict with each other until they tear each other to ribbons, and until they are no longer our best instincts but something dark and bitter and corroborate with itself. And then it fights all the institutions that our best instincts once supported, all the elements of the political commonwealth that we once thought permanent, all the arguments that we once thought settled -- until there is a terrible kind of moral self-destruction that touches those institutions and leaves them soft and fragile and, eventually, evanescent. We do all these things, cruelty running through them like hot blood, and we call it our politics...

Another Casualty Of The Military Police Attitude

A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son - Salon.com:

...After the SWAT team broke down the door, they threw a flashbang grenade inside. It landed in my son’s crib.

Flashbang grenades were created for soldiers to use during battle. When they explode, the noise is so loud and the flash is so bright that anyone close by is temporarily blinded and deafened. It’s been three weeks since the flashbang exploded next to my sleeping baby, and he’s still covered in burns.

There’s still a hole in his chest that exposes his ribs. At least that’s what I’ve been told; I’m afraid to look...

Drug Reform Summary

Why Conservatives Should Want to End the Drug War�|�James Carli:

The issue of drug policy reform is well-understood among commentators and activists on the left. The stark facts that drug use is roughly equal among all racial groups yet brown and black people bear the brunt of drug law arrests and incarceration is a glaring violation of civil rights and social justice, two buzzwords common among the progressive set...

Custom Religion

ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES: Fairness And Other Nonsense in the Gospels:

...Religions also have wonderful aspects, great messages and the ability to help those who suffer. At the same time, humans interpret presumed divine words (or their ideas of those) pretty poorly, on the whole. We are very clever at stressing the bits we like and ignoring the bits we don't like. Those who support literal readings of holy books are not much bothered by the fact that they talk about aspects of cultures which existed centuries ago and sometimes refer to very specific historic events or by the fact that literal readings are ultimately not feasible, because of both the internal inconsistencies they create and because of the problems of interpreting the meanings of ancient languages today.

What are you going to nail your view of life to? That might be the ultimate question which religions try to answer, but as the case of Erick Erickson demonstrates, the answer depends on the wielder of the hammer.

1% Gun Alert

The Rude Pundit: A Few Notes on Our Continuing Gun Derangement:

...There's a near-psychotic attachment people have to their guns, which is a sad commentary on where we are as a people here in the United States. But we've been through that tangled thicket of conflicted emotions before.

Instead, the Rude Pundit wants to ask a question of the people who bankroll the pro-gun movement, like the sinisterly wealthy Koch brothers, who give ass-tons of money to the NRA: Do you, as a rich person, really think it's smart to keep supporting policies that promote income inequality while at the same time fostering a belief in guns as the solution to Americans' problems? Have you really thought this through?

No So Fast, Montana

Court strikes down Montana immigration law:

A Montana judge has ruled that enactment of the state's 2012 voter-approved law banning undocumented immigrants from accessing state services is pre-empted by federal law and is unenforceable.

The law, which aims to deny government jobs and assistance to people in the U.S. illegally, required certain state agencies to certify through a federal database that those requesting services were United States citizens. If a person was not in the country legally, the Montana agency must turn over the name to federal immigration officials...

MSM Takes A Poll Pounding

MediaPost Publications Stop the Presses! Trust In News Media At All-Time Low 06/23/2014:

The proportion of Americans who say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the main sources of news -- newspapers, TV news and the Internet -- has fallen to an all time low of around 20%, according to a poll of 1,027 U.S. adults conducted by Gallup from June 5-8...

Inequality Defined

5 Ways Massive Inequality Is Paralyzing American Society | Alternet:

...1. A Broken System of Compensation: The Combined Salaries of 350,000 Pre-School Teachers is Less Than That of Five Hedge Fund Managers...

Much more here (Salon).

Will Getting Snark Raped

Gentleman George Will is getting damned tired of having to explain rape to you guttersnipes:

...It seems that, after explaining the ins and out of rape to you ungrateful curs, he was shocked and dismayed to discover that you promiscuous info-trollops on the intertubes are unable to comprehend the pearls of wisdom that he dispenses to the riff-raff gratis, courtesy of Ye Olde Washminster Poste...

Where Ignorance Is Power

Today's Conservatives: Pioneers of our new idiocracy - What Would Jack Do:

...Here’s the problem with this new emphasis on ignorance: There’s no way for America to retain even a shred of the “American Exceptionalism” Conservatives gleefully trumpet at every opportunity. How is ignorance of truth and denial of discernible reality supposed to help America compete in an increasingly global economy? There’s no benefit to be realized through aggressive, willful ignorance, and the damage done will not be easily undone.

Is it any wonder why I fear for the future of this (soon to be formerly) great country? We’re allowing agents of ignorance and idiocy to chart our course based of falsehoods and disinformation. There’s no telling which shore we’ll wash up on…but one day we’ll awaken to an American where idiots rule and the educated are shunned and treated like criminals. The transition to our American idiocracy will be complete...

Palin Stumbles Left

This One Issue Is Driving Sarah Palin To 'Renounce' Her 'Republican Ties':

In response to recently leaked images of hundreds of undocumented, unaccompanied minors warehoused in crowded federal cells, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) threatened to “renounce" her "Republican ties" over the GOP's failure to prevent the growing humanitarian crisis...

Yes, That's Their Job

Clinton: Matt Drudge, Karl Rove Planting ‘False Information’ � CBS DC:

Former secretary of state and potential 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton ridiculed Matt Drudge and Karl Rove as “gamers” simply looking to “divert attention” from real issues facing Americans...